


Top Dead Center

by supercarXS



Series: Ghost in the Machine [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Mechanophilia (sort of), POV First Person, automotive lingo, in which Sam hates everything about car shows
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-17
Updated: 2018-01-25
Packaged: 2018-12-03 07:07:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11527098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supercarXS/pseuds/supercarXS
Summary: A rash of disappearances in the desert prompts the Winchesters to investigate Arizona’s infamous blood car legend, but the phantom machine targets Dean and captures him. Sam knows they don’t have much time before the blood car kills Dean, but the good news is there’s a witness who knows how to find him: The Impala.The bad news? Sam can’t understand a word she’s saying.





	1. Chapter 1

**CHAPTER ONE**

**_[POV: DEAN WINCHESTER]_ **

At exactly 1:03 a.m. cruising at 82 mph on Interstate 10 in Phoenix, Arizona, something happened to the Impala.

There was no warning she was gonna go dark. No splutter of the engine, no burning fluid-smell, no flickering of lights. Sure, I’ll admit I nursed a few too many bottles that night, so I guess it’s possible I missed something, but still. She just blacked out. Went completely under in a matter of nanoseconds. I slapped a hand down on the steering wheel, foot slipping over the useless gas pedal as the dead car coasted through the desert heat, quiet as a two-ton machine with no power could be.

“Baby?” I fought with the wheel as I tried to drag her over to the shoulder. She didn’t have a great turning radius anyway and it was damn near impossible to pull her off the interstate without help. My head buzzed with alcohol and the aftereffects of my recent concussions, and with clenched teeth, I wrestled with the Impala, both feet planted firmly on the heavy brake pedal.

She kinda came back as her tires vibrated through the rumble strips on the shoulder. No lights, no nothin’, just her familiar voice in my head. _…Dean?_

I flexed a hand on the wheel. “I’m here.”

_Something’s… wrong._ Headlights flickered, failed again. I sat there, trying to collect my thoughts. Had to get flashlight and toolbox from trunk. Call Sam, tell him we’d broken down, and I’d be spending the night on the side of the Interstate, waiting for daylight (and sobriety) so I could fix Baby.

“You good?” I felt around for my phone, found it in the back pocket of my jeans, brought it to eye level and turned the screen on. Huh. Guess the battery was dead. I tossed it onto the seat.

_I feel… not… right._ The Impala spoke haltingly. She sounded _drugged_.

I straightened up, pressing a palm flat on the cold dashboard. Was my car shaking? Slight tremors ran through her big metal body, vibrating my hand, and my face hardened in concern. “What hurts?”

_Can’t tell._

“Ok. I gotcha.” I put a hand on the door, made sure no traffic was gonna sideswipe and kill me, and pushed my way into the heavy Mojave heat. The ground swayed for a second, but I got it under control by grabbing onto the Impala’s doorframe to ground myself. “Hang tight,” I said to her, and she just wheezed through her exhaust in response. Fear coiled in my gut; I knew I could fix whatever had gone wrong with her, but nobody likes to see their loved ones in pain.

When I stepped away from her, something strange happened.

I don’t know what caused me to look up, but I did, and there it was: and old muscle car parked a few lengths ahead, idling hot with headlights dark. When did that get there? I squinted at the white car, admiring the shape of the low-slung chassis. Flipping through my mental index of cars, I matched it: Pontiac Firebird, if the blood-red phoenix decal on the hood was anything to go by, late-70s body style with a pointed front end and square headlights peering from the honeycomb grille.

I was drawn to it. I took a step, then another and another, crossing the distance on the sandblasted interstate, because there was a magnet inside of me now, coaxing me toward that white Firebird. 

_Dean!_ Behind me, the Impala’s motor hitched, failed when it didn’t catch. _Dean, don’t…!_

I ignored her. The closer I got to the Firebird, the stronger its pull became. It called to me, except it didn’t actually speak, not like Baby. I just… felt it there, and I knew it wanted me. My boots crunched over gravel, sand, busted glass, and I stood in front of the Firebird, transfixed by the heat waves radiating from the grille, the hood seams, distorting the moonlit traffic lines on the freeway.

_No, no, no, driver. Don’t do it. Don’t listen to it!_

When I touched the Firebird, everything else went quiet. A heavy energy settled over me like a winter blanket, weighing down my shoulders, but not uncomfortably. A new buzz entered my system, like the _just right_ point of being drunk off bourbon, and I felt… calm.

I stepped around the Firebird’s grille and went for the driver’s seat because I knew it wanted me to.

_DEAN! NO!_

The Firebird shut its door behind me, locked me inside of it, and I blacked out.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**_[POV: SAM WINCHESTER, 18 HOURS EARLIER]_ **

Two things I can’t say I really care for are car shows and the desert. And, well, here I was.

My brother was having the time of his life in the driver’s seat of his black Impala. As usual, the radio dial had been carefully spun until the local classic rock station snapped into clarity, and now he was pounding on his car’s steering wheel in time with the music. I folded my arms, blew through my lips, and stared out the window. There really wasn’t much to look at, just sand, sand, and more sand. Oh yeah, and cacti. My favorite.

“Look alive, Sammy.” Dean stopped drumming to the Def Leppard long enough to glance over at me. The wheel hissed against his palms, which had me worried for a split second before I remembered he wasn’t actually driving. The Impala could handle herself, thank you very much. Dean was behind the wheel more as a formality than anything else.

“Look alive? Dude, it’s like four in the morning,” I said through a yawn. Even the paper cup of coffee I had clutched in my good hand hadn’t helped yet, and I’d downed nearly half of it.

“Seven,” Dean corrected.

“Whatever. I’m running off two hours of sleep here. Cut me some slack.”

“You’re the one who stayed up ‘til all hours watching porn.” We were in stop-and-go traffic now, and I freaked out for a split second because Dean wasn’t even holding the steering wheel and was instead going through a bag he’d stashed on the floorboards.

I exhaled and looked up toward the car’s headliner. “I wasn’t _watching porn,_ Dean—I was _doing research_. You should try it every once and a while.”

He paused for a minute, then snickered, and I bristled under my clothing. As strange as it was to think the Impala was completely sentient, it bothered me even more when I knew she’d made some snide comment about me, a comment only Dean could hear. His face twisted into a grin, the healing gash on his forehead crinkling with the gesture, and I wanted to slap it right off his face.

“Got that right,” he snickered out the side of his mouth, then sobered up and caught my gaze in the rearview. “We’ll find everything we need here.”

“You sure?”

He shrugged. I glared at him.

We eased past a sign: PHOENIX AUTO EXPO. At least we were close to the parking lot. The faster we got through with the car show, the sooner I could head back to our air-conditioned motel room, and… wait a minute. I twisted around in my seat when we came to a fork in the road. “Uh, Dean? Parking lot’s back there.”

“I know.” Dean produced an envelope from the canvas bag and nudged it back under the floorboards. I noticed the cars around us had changed. No more mundane daily drivers. We’d fallen into the tail end of a long line of perfectly waxed classics. I gritted my teeth and looked up the line of eye-piercing cars, and that’s when I saw it: EXHIBITOR CHECK-IN, bannered over a cruelly small shed in desperate need of a paint job. Dean opened the envelope, withdrew a piece of paper with the word REGISTRATION in bold letters across the top.

Then it clicked. The obsession with keeping the Impala completely spot-free after we got her back from the body shop a few days ago, desperate searches for car washes _every night_ , a pretty penny spent at the auto parts store on wax and tire shine… it all made sense.

“You _entered_ the car show?!”

 He grinned.

“Dean!” I rounded on my brother. “What the hell are you thinking? We don’t have time for this!”

“Aww, Sammy, it just wouldn’t be right to leave Baby in the parking lot.” Dean affectionately patted the dashboard. The Impala responded by picking herself up on her suspension, engine purring, and I rolled my eyes. I couldn’t lie, Dean and the Impala were worrying me a little bit. (Is there a word for people who are, uh, _attracted_ to cars? Because I’m pretty sure Dean would qualify.)

I put a hand to my forehead and leaned on it. “Look, I agree this is a good place to look around, but spending all day here probably isn’t the best use of our time. The blood car won’t be here, Dean.”

“Three days,” Dean corrected. I resisted the urge to bludgeon my fist into my skull. “First off, you don’t know it won’t be here. Its last twelve victims had one thing in common: they showed in the Auto Expo.” He looked at me in the rearview again. “We have free roam of the blood car’s hunting ground, Sammy, and a captive audience of locals who are hip to the legend.”

I wanted to point out we could’ve done that as visitors to the show, but knew the argument was pointless.

Dean was silent, nodding to himself, deep in silent conversation with the damn car. Hard to think that just two and a half weeks ago, this machine was just that: a machine. Who would’ve thought our Colorado excursion to kill a skinwalker would result in an earth-shattering revelation that seriously altered a fundamental part of our lives?

Dean relayed, “This was her idea. I just went along with it.”

“Thanks, _car_ ,” I grumbled. The Impala responded by stopping short, which would’ve sent me into the dashboard if I hadn’t thrown my good arm out and braced my cast across my chest.

Dean shook himself out and said, “I know. I know!” And then turned to me. “She doesn’t like it when you call her that.”

I threw out my hands. “She doesn’t like it when I call her Baby, either! What am I supposed to do?!”

Dean shrugged. So did the Impala with a tilt of the wheels.

* * *

“Don’t lean on her!” Dean snapped a rag at me. “You’ll fuck up the wax!”

I jerked back, slightly offended and ready to square off against my brother, but he was too busy attacking the Impala’s paint with the rag where I’d apparently smudged it. I rolled my eyes and sidled away from the car, debating whether or not I really wanted to take off my light plaid shirt. Even this early in the morning, I could tell already the Mojave’s heat was going to quickly become smothering. Problem was… I wasn’t wearing anything underneath. I thought I was being smart when I negated putting on an undershirt because of the heat. Now I regretted it.

Echoing my thoughts, Dean yanked his arms out of his plain gray button-up and slung it through the Impala’s open window. Normally, I’d give him shit for stripping down to a ratty tank top, but I today I bit my tongue because, well, I was kinda jealous. I focused on rolling my sleeves up as far as they could go.

“Baby says there are some house rules today.” Dean shouldered the trunk open, and I got worried for a second because I thought he was going for our weapons stash, but no, he was just hauling our battered metal-sided cooler onto the grass. “You touch her, you clean her. Or she’ll gut you.”

The Impala laughed at me. I couldn’t hear her. But I just knew.

“So. What do we know?” Dean raised a hand in greeting when another old muscle car idled into the slot next to us. “Should be a lot, since you were neck deep in _research_ last night. Tell me, how’d you manage one-handed?”

“Oh, shut it.” Yep, I was just about done with him. I lifted the collar of my shirt because I’d already begun to sweat through it. Awesome. I rolled my eyes, collecting my thoughts, and blew through my lips. Dean chuckled to himself and dropped into the grass in the shade of the Impala’s fender, easing his back against her. She met him with a creak of the suspension as she gently repositioned herself to support him, and they both waited expectantly.

“Well,” I began, unsure of what to do with myself. Did I join him in the shade? Stay standing? Part of me wanted to stay as far away from the black Chevy as I could because it still weirded me out that she was a living entity that could feel and think like I could. The decision was made for me, though, when I heard a searing engine behind me and realized I was standing in the slot a blue Corvette was trying to pull into. I gave an apologetic wave and bit the bullet, settling into the well-groomed grass next to Dean, but I kept myself from leaning on the Impala.

“Blood car.” I looked out over the gathering of shiny machines. I didn’t understand it, but I could definitely appreciate the care these people put into their cars. “Shows up once a year and that’s the last you see of Uncle Joe. It seems to target a certain type of person.”

“Car people.”

“Yep.”

“Guess you’re safe,” Dean said dryly.

I shrugged. “Probably. So, the person the blood car takes disappears for a week or two, and that’s it. Until the body parts start showing up.” I made a face and pulled out the newspaper clipping I had folded up in my pocket. “This is from last year. Look at that.” I showed Dean the black and white image, which had him squinting at it, eyes narrowed and irises wobbling as he tried to focus in. That made me worry about his concussion all over again. He was still supposed to be on concussion protocol after getting nailed in the head by the skinwalker, but we’d both gotten kind of lax.

“Is that a hacked-off arm?”

“Yep,” I said again. “Found off the side of Interstate 10 two weeks after one Todd Harvick disappeared last year. It was his arm,” I clarified. “Then they found a foot. And a rib bone. And a chunk of skull…”

“And we’re thinking the blood car took him and chewed him up?”

“That’s what the legend says,” I replied. “And it’s not the first time—it’s happened every spring for the past twenty-something years. Authorities say serial killer, but the lore says blood car. Nobody’s ever been convicted.”

Dean nodded to himself. “I’m thinking angry spirit attached to a car for some reason.”

“Maybe. I couldn’t find any violent deaths related to cars other than accidents, though. Nothing that would really cause something like that.” I chewed my tongue. “It would help if somebody knew what model this blood car is. Then we could try to find out who it belonged to. But everyone who sees it…”

“…Gets dead,” Dean finished.

“And only the victims actually see it. Nobody else.” I breathed out. “So we’ve got no real eyewitness accounts. Just an urban legend and a couple dozen bodies.”

 “Might not even be a real car then,” Dean said. “Just a manifestation.” He furrowed his brow. “When cars die, can they come back as ghosts?”

I figured the Impala would answer that one, so I kept my mouth shut.

“Well then.” After a moment, Dean grunted as he hauled himself to his feet. “Saw a bunch of food vendors by the entrance. I’m gonna go pick something up before we get swamped with adoring fans. You comin’?”

I didn’t really want to move—save my energy for the heat later in the day—but I also didn’t really want to let Dean out of my sight. I might be the one with a cast on a busted arm, but he was the one whose head had been kicked by a hoof the size of a dinner plate. Yep. I was still worried about him.

With some effort, I hefted myself into a standing position, shifting back and forth as blood powered back into my legs. “Where to?”

My brother didn’t respond. He was staring out over the showgrounds at the literally hundreds of cars, and he had this weird look on his face: a distant sort of smile.

“Dean?” I walked up next to him, thinking, _shit, the concussion’s bad again,_ but then he gave a low whistle. “Check out _Smokey and the Bandit_ ,” he said softly. “Now that’s a good lookin’ car.”

“What?”

“That Trans Am.” He nodded approvingly. “Like the one from the movie. Wrong color, but still.”

“Pretend I don’t know what that is.”

“See? That white thing over there with the phoenix on the hood.” He jerked a head in the direction of the car, but I still didn’t see it. Not that I’d be able to recognize it among the literally hundreds of other cars, but Dean was giving me a look. “C’mon, Sammy. I taught you better’n that! It’s a Pontiac Firebird!”

“Then why didn’t you just call it that?”

“Because it’s not _just_ a Firebird, man, it’s a…” he trailed off, squinted, and snapped out of his trance. “Huh. Must’ve moved it,” he said under his breath. “Never mind. Let’s get breakfast. You,” he said to the Impala, thrusting a finger at her. “Don’t go anywhere. And no flirting with that Corvette.”

She blinked her lights in response.


End file.
